276 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE- 



the future men and women of our State. We want them to 

 remain upon the farms and take hold of the work where you 

 and I leave it and carry it on and on as the years go by. Farm 

 life and home life must be made more attractive and this grange 

 organization from its inception has stood for better education, 

 better church privileges and for a broader and nobler type of 

 citizenship. It must be a factor, and will be a factor in rflaking 

 home life more attractive to the boy and the girl. 



I believe that it is possible in an educational way, for this 

 organization, through its individual membership and the things 

 which it can do in an indivdual capacity, to make the place that 

 is a home in name a home indeed. When that time comes we 

 shall have a new home in which there shall be no parlor or 

 parlor bedroom with its system of cold storage. There will be 

 a place where we can stay and read and study and think, and en- 

 tertain our congenial friends. And there will be a room where 

 we can eat and be happy. This is all we need, but how we 

 agonize and toil and suffer because we want more. The grange 

 in Maine in the future is to be a leader in making just that kind 

 of home and thereby promoting agricultural development in 

 the good old Pine Tree State. We want the girls and boys to 

 stay with us and if they can see the possibilities that are ahead 

 in agriculture when rightly developed, we believe that many of 

 them will have the inclination to do so. If it were possible I wish 

 that I might say to them tonight that wherever they may be, 

 under whatever conditions they may find themselves, in what- 

 ever occupation they may be engaged, whether it be upon the 

 farm, in the shop or factory or mill, whether it be in the manu- 

 facturing industries or in the learned professions, however dis- 

 couraging conditions are, it is always a laudable ambition to 

 try to be worthy, to do something worth while. My desire in 

 coming here tonight was simply to demonstrate that whatever 

 may have been the conditions in the past, in the future this 

 organization is to identify itself with and stand for those things 

 which tend to make Maine a better place in which to live; to 

 stand for and to be identified with all those organizations which 

 are struggling so nobly to develop the grandest occupation that 

 we have in the State of Maine, that of agriculture. 



